


Blood on the sand, mail in the hand

by SilverGopher



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Amnesia, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-12-06 02:45:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 6,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11591307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverGopher/pseuds/SilverGopher
Summary: My Fallout New Vegas fan fic. will include violence, and potetnially relationships. work-in progress.





	1. Prologue

The wind blows across the desert. It's cold at night, and the three of the four figures on the hill are wrapped tight. The man curled in the fetal position wears the uniform of a courier. One of the men finishes digging a grave as the courier memorizes his face through the impotent tears. He seemed dark, maybe black. He wore the colors of the khans. He'd be easy enough to find. The other khan, because the courier realized there were two was white with a spike mohawk. He wore a bandanna. He couldn't get a good look at the man in the center though, so he raised himself to his knees. He wore a checkerboard suit and slicked back hair.he noticed the couriers rise and began to speak. The courier stared at his face trying to memorize it. It was blurry and indistinct, but he supposed that the suit would do well enough. He didn't notice he'd been shot until after they buried him. His last conscious thought as they shoveled him in was that everything hurt.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> wake up, meet the doc

Light. That was new. He hadn't felt light on his face in what felt like years. He tried to open his eyes. He couldn't. Panic began to set in and he struggled to open them. Slowly the crust began to tear away and he opened them. he shut them again. Everything was so damn bright! It hurt. He tried again slowly. It took time but on about the third try he was able to keep his eyes open. The light that had hurt him so was streaming in gentle through the slats in a mostly closed window. It lit up the motes of dust floating on the still air. He didn't know where he was or what had happened to him but he thought he'd push his luck. He tried to sit up. Nausea assaulted him. it roiled up in waves from deep down. He pushed through till he was parallel to the bed in a mostly vertical position. “ah, you're finally awake.” the voice had a worn southern accent. He was positive he'd never heard it before. The voice had a an underlying sense of unease. Had he done something to upset the voice? He didn't think so. But he wasn't sure. He didn't like the feeling of not knowing. It felt kinda empty. The voice seemed to come closer, but it was hard for him to tell. He turned his head, and everything got even more blurry. He felt dizzy and almost fell, only to be caught by a surprisingly firm and somewhat wrinkled arm. So the voice belonged to an older gentleman he thought. The voice murmured again. Hazy and indistinct. But then it sharpened, “I said, do you remember your name?” panic seized him, he didn't. He'd never even thought about that. Frantically he struggled through a funhouse of distorted and shattered memories searching for a name. “six, they called me six.” the old man hmmed. “six” worried that, that it was wrong. Was six not a name? Had he disappointed the man? For some reason it seemed really important to make the man with the white moustache happy. “well that's not the name i'd have chosen, but if that's your name that's your name.” the older man seemed satisfied. Was that the same as happy? Was it close enough? Six hoped it was. He felt very weak, and everything seemed too loud, too fast. Too blurry. It didn't seem right. He could kind of feel a throbbing in the background, pulsing with his heart beat. A wave of pain rode that pulse. Six had known far too much pain in a short life. His memories were so disjointed and brittle that he felt as if his life had started in this bed. The old man pushed a cracked and worn mirror into six's hands. “now I take pride in my needlework, but you take a look and let me know if I left anything out of place.” if six had been paying attention to those words, they might have seemed odd but he was absorbed in the mirror. the face it showed almost didn't feel real. The skin was pale, whether by genetics or lack of sun would have been hard to say if not for the other indicators. White hair, bleach white. Pale blue eyes. Clearly he was some variant of mutant, perhaps an albino. He had a scraggly unshaven mass around his jaw. He didn't feel like the kind of man who'd let a beard grow unsteered. That just didn't feel like the old him. The new him, the him him though? Something told him he didn't really care. A thin scar split the right side of his lips, branching in two on the bottom, pale and faded. There was no tugg to tell him where he got it. There was a hole shaped scar over his right brow, but it already seemed to be fading into nothingness. Overall it was a face that might draw an eye, but he wasn't sure how he felt about that. “everything seems fine, sir” six couldn't remember most things, but some things don't wash away. An older man is always sir, unless he's an asshole. A woman is always miss or ma'am unless you know her name. Pull out chairs, and hold open doors. Old world manner die hard, and sometimes not at all. “good, good. Thats enough for today. We've made a lot of progress here today Six. Get some rest, your bodies still knitting itself back together.” the old man laid him back down gently, and scarcely had Six's head touched the old straw pillow than he was wandering through a dream. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which the courier dreams

He was on the hill. There was only one. 

His shadow stood opposite him, but also him. Blood leaked from a blown open face. The man smiled, and it was a wolf's smile. Fangs and veiled hunger. 

He spoke in his own voice, “we walked a long way down dusty roads, and we'll walk further still.” 

a man in a checkered suit was shoveling a fresh grave. “thats us. That's me. I don't exist anymore, because of him.” six's grim reflection threw his thumb at the checkered man. “all we were is buried an dead, and i'd be hard pressed to say it isn't for the best. But we always did laugh at the reaper, and this man thought he'd punch our ticket for us. Kill him. Cast him down and make him beg. I'm not leaving till you do. Now start walking.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> stuff happens

Six woke up laughing. it hurt to laugh, but he felt it would hurt more not to.

 

six didn't know how long he had been laughing, but when he stopped doc mitchel was frowning down at him. it wasn't an angry frown

more embarrassed than anything else. he pressed to bundles to Six. The first one caught his eye, clothes, his clothes. he didn't pay attention to the docs warnings

just unraveled the mess of em, and gulped in something approaching horror as a 9mm handgun in an old leather holster fell from the center.

 

"Don't worry now son, that ain't the one put a hole in your noggin. sorry, kid i tried to warn you."

Six ignored the doctor in favor of putting on the clothes. off went off-whit undies replaced with old boxers, and blue jeans with torn knees and frayed bottoms.

old combat boots with worn and crumbly soles, and an travel stained tee shirt under an old bikers jacket. glasses with a cracked lens that turned the world into a kaleidoscope. a safe, comfortable kaleidoscope.

 

six glanced at the 9mm, and shivered. something had changed. he didn't know if it was guns, or just that make of em. but he wanted nothing to do with it.

"doc, you got anything you can trade me for this piece," Six hooked his thumb at the old 9 mil.  the doc slowly shook his head up and down, " an old laser pistol i think. i'll show ya how to use it." 

 

while the doc rummaged through boxes of old things, six looked at the other package the doc had tossed him. it was the size of a textbook, wrapped in brown paper and twine. a stamp on it said to nipton. 


	5. Chapter 5

The open road has a way of lulling a man into a state of inobservance. The laser pistols unfamiliar weight thumped against

six's leg like an old world metronome. Thump, thump, thump.

 

Soldiers warned him about Primm, but like an idiot he payed them no mind. so he was sent scurrying through bombed out buildings

as convicts opened fire. Nine mil slugs puckered the stone around him as he ducked out of town and into the shifting sand.

 

After the contact he avoided buildings for a day, but that course took him through the ants. they swarmed him in what seemed like hundreds.

Zap, Zam, Alkazam. His old laser burned through carapace after carapace, and the smell of burning meat filtered through his nostrils. they bit him and he 

dragged a bleeding leg behind him. The town was in sight, it's junk walls seeming so inviting that he almost paid the smoke no mind.

 

There was a crazy man in the town, his first human contact in hours. Six had tied a fraction of a torn shirt over his wound, and he was starting to burn and peel.

When the crazy man started going on about the lottery, he was working on the last little bit of patience that six had. the world was spinning and it wasn't because of the

kaleidoscopic glasses, and sound phased in and out like a dream. the crazy man started running, and the movement startled him. his hand dropped to his hip and old 

gunslinger skills showed themselves as he drew the laser and put the sight square on his back. The metallic explosion of the laser seemed to echo in the still dessert air.

 

He entered the town with a vague sense of worry worming its way down his gut, but he couldn't place it until he saw the hanged men. They were hung from the

lampposts, next to men crucified on the electrical poles. Corpses were burning in an old tire fire and rabid dogs ripped at old meat cut from once living hosts.

Six walked through this fresh hell till he met the man the man with a dog on his head. The man had a vicious smile, and claimed credit for the horrors. He talked in

a mix of latin and english. He let Six go to spread the word of this horror to the soldiers.

 

The road was cleared and bloody, an old ambush taken apart by reddened machetes, and a man in a dogs head. the bull was painted in blood. He trudged to to the

old rest stop he'd been told to make for. When he got there after a steep climb up an old cracked road, he met a ranger, Jackson was his name. they gabbed for a bit and

Jackson went to report that Vulpes was on the prowl. six crashed in the rest barracks, drunk on old moonshine, sleeping between a soldier and an old caravan hand.

 

The sun woke him up, he had a delivery to return.

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in this chapter italics mean Six's thoughts

It's an unusual feeling to wake up and not know where you are. For a minute six was gripped with a blind panic before he felt the 

hilt of his laser pistol under the old straw pillow.  as he pulled himself up he decided that he didn't like the pillow, it had left too

many scratches for that. And there was the odd chance that he might be allergic to straw, as he barely managed to squeeze down

a sneeze.  He put his stuff where it belonged, pistol on his hip, package in the satchel, and made the bed with near military precision.

No-one could say that he was a bad house guest. he took breakfast at the bar, if an old bag of chips and a bottle of slightly irradiated water

could be counted as breakfast. If he was the more introspective sort he might wonder if he was punishing himself for his failure to properly deliver 

the package. 

 

The sun was beating down when he left, and it felt just awful on his peeling skin. _I_ _really should buy a hat._ no matter where six turned the sun was

glaring down at him, bouncing erratically through his fractured glasses, which only made it all the worse. He pulled the collar of the old vault suit higher,

hoping the denim would block some of the rays. it worked to an extent, and Six was quite glad of that relief. he trod forward his boots rolling over cracks and

rubble with a practiced grace, born of years of courier work and scavenging. his pistol thumped like a metronome and the only thing he had to look out for was

the heat mirages rising off the asphalt, such as it was. when people talk about courier work they talk up the danger and thrill, but most of it is walking over already

cleared trails for miles and miles to deliver a couple a magazines or whatever needed to be shipped. Eventually the crushing silence of the desert plains got to him

and he started fiddling with the pip-boys radio, trying to find a channel that worked. he remembered that he didn't like mojave radio, and he finally hit on something 

called black mountain radio. he heard mutants tell stories and argue, and found it interesting enough that he didn't hit the dial. He listened till the signal shorted out,

and by then he was close to an hour away from Goodsprings anyway so he realized he'd probably should start looking out for geckos. he remembered hearing they had 

problems with the little bastards last time he was in town.  luckily he didn't have any trouble on the way in, but he did have some trouble with Doc Mitchel. the package 

had been meant for an old friend, and finding out that Nipton had been sacked just about broke the little old man. and little was the right word, he seemed to shrink into 

himself upon hearing the news. "Can't say i'm happy with the state of affairs, but you did your job. Gimme just a minute," with that he bustled out of the room, and Six 

could hear the clink of caps and the slight swish of rough burlap, and then the Doc was back and pushing a bag into his hands and shooing him towards the door. Six

went willingly, the old man needed time to grieve.


	7. Chapter 7

Drinking isn't a great coping tactic, but it's all Six had. There wasn't enough of his shattered mind left over to know if he 

had a better idea. So he found himself sitting in trudy's dusty bar on a creaky seat with a bottle of rye in his hand. There

was something almost beautiful about the way it's curves fit his hand, as if it had been made for it. In a sense it had. 

He tried to ignore trudy's rather loud, and potentially violent debate with a man in an old prison uniform and a bulletproof vest.

_I'm going to kill that man, wether or not she wants me to. i'm gonna kill him stone dead._

 

When the man, Joe Cobb, according to his prison uniform left Six followed him out. Around the time they hit the edge of the town

joe turned towards six. "what are you following me for? scram! unless you want a pullet in the bread pan!"

thats when Six started hitting him, the AEP7 was a hefty piece of steel and wiring, and durable by design it worked quite well as a

too advanced bludgeon. test make a dull crack when smacked with the barrel of a laser pistol. teeth splattered the ground, resting in 

small puddles of blood as the red started dying down and the world returned to the old kaleidoscope. there was a felling of guilt deep

in his gut as Six looked at his handiwork. Joe Cobb was beat near to death and was lacking close to all his teeth. Six put the muzzle to his forehead

and burned him away in crimson heat. Nobody could accuse six of being unpragmatic, and so he dug through the dead mans pockets, pulling out a small 

number of caps. he dumped the body between some rocks, he doubted the town would take offense to his shooting Joe but it didn't hurt to be cautious.

 

Chet was an unlikable man like a deathclaw was dangerous, a severe understatement. Chet was unlikable in large part because of his unrelentingly mercenary attitude and 

approach to life many problems. But unpleasant as he was, he had hats for sale, and Six walked out of his shop with a slightly torn tan ball cap, of old military

issue. it was a good hat, if a bit overpriced, which had rankled six at the time. But as he stepped out he found that he enjoyed the way it kept the sun off.  He snaked his 

back to trudy's for another drink, and overheard her loudly arguing with a man. "If you don't tell us where Joe went we'll burn down this town!" Shit he really fucked up.


	8. Chapter 8

Six had a sense of responsibility, which was something of an irregularity before the war, let alone after it. it was this very responsibility

that made him walk back to good springs instead of keep Doc Mitchel's package to himself. that same responsibility was making him

feel like shit. Six could only see one way to keep the town from the flames, but he wasn't one for self sacrifice, so he decided to go

with option two. 

 

Option two required a high powered rifle. Six had enough for a few rounds at trudy's or a handful of energy cells, but not a high powered rifle. 

And Chet wasn't the kind of man who gave things without caps on the table. so Six settled for a handful of energy cells.

"Thats a lot of ammo boy. Should i keep my head down, or what? you can tell me."

"Just going hunting, i suppose." Six said with a wolf's grin. Chet felt it wise not to question him.

 

The road to the prison was rough, going over hills and through a small valley. He stayed slung low to the ground watching for traps,

and found a few. Simple bombs, rigged to small tripwires. some well of knowledge deep in him had a small chuckle at how inept they were.

a tin can filled with nails and black powder would have been far more effective. Sneaking like he was was a good idea,  it let him see the guard in the tower 

before the guard saw him.

 

Lasers don't buck, theres no recoil. what they do is burn your hand slightly through steel and rubber, and Six realized he would have to pick up some gloves. the guard 

was vaporized in a blinding flash that seemed almost deafening when it exploded outwards. The alarms were going off so Six bulled through the entryway and slammed 

the door down.  until now six had been carefully aiming, but he turned that room into a strobe show. two men charged with switchblades. they lost there legs below the 

knee. he sot a man who was lighting a molotov in the hand, and another was caught in the splash. he put a fourth shot through the chest of the man who had followed 

him in with a single action revolver, but not before he took a shot to the upper arm. there were two men left, but they were running. Runners now would be fighters later 

so he shot them in the back before putting down the legless men. lasers cauterize so bloodless hadn't taken it's grim toll.  field medicine wasn't Six's speciality but he was 

laughing a scratchy, glass and smoke laugh, not unlike a hyena's as he wound another strip of cloth around the new wound, this one taken from a prison uniform. He was 

still laughing as he bulled out the door and into the next cell block.

 

Five blocks cleared in a burn, and a man named Eddie was ionized by the wolf in men's clothing before night fell. when he wandered back to town smelling of ashes and 

slowly leaking blood, all he'd say was that he'd fixed a fuckup.

 


	9. Chapter 9

No one could say that six didn't learn from his mistakes, he needed some armor. And a pair of gloves.

The loot taken from the prison was enough for three major things, a chest piece made of steel molded to fit while he stood an waited by a armor smith.

It slid on from above and straped up on the sides, and it's white paint was a bit flecking. Thick leather sewed to the arms of his vault suit, to create vambrace and

cauldrons of sorts. and thick leather work gloves, so his hands wouldn't burn when he had to do some gun work. all told it added fifteen pounds to his cary weight, but

it was well made so the weight rode easy.

 

Six didn't stay in town much longer after that, no packages needed carrying and he had some gear to break in. maybe that colonel in prime would have work for him.

wouldn't hurt to ask.

 

the walk to prime had been made so often it almost seemed instinctual, but like all things when they get to easy they suddenly went hard.  turns out there might have

been some survivors of the prison. they made their presence known by shooting him in the chest, which didn't even leave much of a dent, must have been a squib.

he didn't let them keep the upper hand, but decided to try something different. He pulled a switchblade from his boot and charged, arm looping low, before rocketing up

and under a ribcage. he pulled it loose in a shower and slit the throat of the other powder ganger in a heart beat. that brief violent interlude was bookend by three more

hours of walking and night was falling by the time he reached primm and could afford to clean his armor. 

 

Turning up in armor convinced the colonel that he was a mere, not a courier so he found himself press ganged to clear out the town.


	10. Chapter 10

Despite his clear aptitude for it Six didn't consider himself to be skilled in the ways of violence. this could seem quite weird, but he 

attributed his skill at violence to the wolf inside, the other Six who screamed in his brain whenever blood was on the air. he let him off

the leash. and as he walked to the town, he loosened his grip on the leash.

 

"All right, ya gangers! if you want to live I recommend ya surrender now!"

Their response came in gunfire. As expected, so Six dropped the leash. The cackle started deep in his gut as he pulled his AEP7, and loosed some shots.

they didn't hit anything but they knocked apart the brick work and the metallic explosion they make going off frightened the cons. So he charged, till he reached

the wall where they were hiding and shoved the muzzle into the gut of a man in a thick winter jacket and pulled the trigger. he burned through and shot through the

steaming hole to hit the man behind the first one in a flurry of crimson light. the bullets stopped so he went through there pockets and pulled out a few frag grenades,

and he could only wonder why they didn't use them earlier. 

 

The Bison Steve was a standard show motel, and they tend to stick to the same floor plan, one that the wolf had memorized. so he bulled through the door and 

cocked his arm back. a pound of high explosives can be thrown like a baseball, and if you're really good banked off a wall. The wolf wasn't that good, but close

only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.  the explosion threw shrapnel that scythed through meat severing legs and ripping apart torsos. five men were in the

blast radius, and had been reduced to component parts and severed limbs.  The wolf stepped lightly though the slurry, pistol held in one hand. there was a man

scurrying in the mush, he'd been just outside the radius and lost a leg. the wolf shot him in the back of the head burning away the hair and liquefying brains. the

stench of coppery blood and violent death was on the air. there was sound in the dining area, a group of them. the wolf got close, hiding in what little shadows there

were  between the flickering flames of wastebaskets. he threw the other grenade he'd scrounged, again not unlike a baseball. after the collosall bang there were screams

and the wolf swept through to clear the area. there was the metallic hum of a laser punctuated by the dull explosions of it going off and then the screaming came to a 

rather abrupt end.

 

There was some shouting from the kitchen, and the wolf went to investigate. a man in ragged leather armor and a tin star pinned on his chest, turned out to be the

culprit.

 "let me go, please! you! in the vault suit! cut me free please!"

The wolf prowled around, before putting words past his teeth, "Lawman, have you seen a man in a checkered suit?"

"Ye-yeah! i have, and i'll tell you if you let me go."

the wolf knelt and put the muzzle of his pistol over the tiny tin star.

"i think you don't understand how this works. you tell me or i kill you, and leave your body for the flys."

"Novac, he was heading for novac!" The man was quivering in fear. the wolf holstered his pistol and pulled the switch blade, and sawed through the rope

with that sinister chuckle on his tongue. he followed the cowardly lawman out the door, and the light was bright. Morning had come.

And Six took the reins again.


	11. Chapter 11

It was always rough to take the reins from the wolf, the vessel was always shaking and bleeding and scratchy. The nose was always 

clogged with the copper scent of fresh blood.  it was unpleasant, to say the least. but Six grinned his wolf's smile and bore it. And then it was

done and he was walking back over the overpass.

 

"You shouldn't be alive! there were forty of them, and you had a laser pistol! this should not be possible."

"clearly it was possible, or i wouldn't be here, now would I? we need to settle up."

 

There was the clink of caps and Six remembered to ask after packages, and found himself heading back to the outpost as an unofficial military 

courier. papers sandwiched in a manila folder rode high and mighty in his satchel, probably inscribed with terrible wisdom, or valuable secrets,

but couriers don't peek. he delivered it to raider Jackson and found himself on the road for Novac with another delivery. this one is letter, handwritten

and smelling of grief and pain. the recipient was marked one craig boone.


	12. Chapter 12

Novac was about as unremarkable as a little town could get, except for the dinosaur out front. that was pretty remarkable.

it was a small curl of old ranch houses built around a crumbling motel. Local legend has it that the towns name came from the 

perinialy malfunctioning no vacancies sign. 

 

The dinosaur stood about thirty feet tall and afforded a good lock at the area around, especially the main road. If Six squinted

real hard he could see the barrel of a high-powered rifle poking it's way out of that. the glint off the scope seemed to follow him as he entered town, 

long after it feasibly couldn't. Its not fun to live beneath a rifles barrel.

 

When Six delivered the letter it was to a sour faced young man who couldn't be older than twenty three. The man wasn't one for conversation, so Six made 

himself scarce after the delivery. He was running low on energy cells, and desperately wanted an upgrade. Hell, he'd even switch back to ballistics if it meant a bit 

more stopping power. so he headed to cliffs broiscoes shop, and procured a laser rifle and two handfuls of micro fusion cells, and some spares for his back up.


	13. Chapter 13

Six had a bad habit of just nodding his head and saying yes when he was bored with a conversation. Paired with a sense of ethics that screamed at him to finish any job he took, willingly or absentmindedly. Clearing out a ghouls nest wasn't high on the list of things Six desperately wanted to do, he still had to buy a hat after all. But he was low on caps, and he'd agreed to the Repcon job. 

 

Six had been in rep conn facilities before, but they tended to be filled with robots, not ghouls. So either the bigger threats had been removed in the fight, or this facilitily wasn't like any other Repconn facilitily. The road certainly seemed to say so, it was long and made of patchy, broken down asphalt, just like any other road. What really set it apart was the concrete guard post at the front of the canyon. it was a standard pillbox, made of concrete thick enough to survive the end of the world. There were some ammo boxes squirreled away in there, but they were just as empty as he expected. But, it never hurt to check. except for when it did. There was a burning hole, and a missing memory, but he could remember telling someone about it, like some kind of weird second hand story, half forgotten and tattered. he stuck his hand in an ammo box, and a knife on a rig ended up driving through the flesh on the top of his hand between his first and third knuckle. It was the first of what he remembered telling someone were his learning scars.

 

It took him a half hour to reach the next secuirity station, he'd stopped to have a bit of water and got sidetracked delving his graymatter. the second station had been constructed much later, and out of old sandbags, worn and holey. Six didn't think he'd ever seen a new sandbag, and frankly that was all kinds of ridiculous. The mojave was at least 98% sand, why couldn't they scrape that into some burlap sacks and have a brand new defensive line? It really seemed to Six that the NCR, fuckers that they were were the only ones actively trying to rebuild.it says something about the state of the world when a bureaucracy is  the only thing making any progress. there was a chess board there, with caps on every square, which in addition to being just a huge waste of money, was a clear sign that they didn't know how to play checkers. For some reason that really irritated Six. Something niggled at him about that but it was connected to another memory hole, and he still had a job to do. 

 

Maybe he was doing so many strange things at the drop of a hat in order to quickly make up for what he'd lost. That was one theory that bounced around in his skull, But something told hime that maybe he was just bored. He was used to his thoughts contradicting each other like that, but he still wasn't used to the odd little burn when they went for something torn away by a nine millimeter slug, and grasping hands. frankly it was miracle that he had as much as he did.

 

And one of the few memoryies he had was attached to another learning scar, an imprint of a human bite, on his right shoulder, now covered by blue cotton. The only memories he could rightly claim were like that, attached to scars or pain. He didn't think he'd led an easy life, but his hard knock learning saved him that day. It was the only thing that let him know feral ghouls are much faster than they have any right to be, what with being emaciated and underfed people with missing skin. still the memory didn't register until he'd been taken to the ground, but steel plate kept grasp overgrown nails from rending his skin, and leather managed to stop the bite, that would have overlapped with that scar. Switch blades aren't great knives, they don't have a whole lot of utility, but what they offer is speed, and thats what saved him. Just like everything else about them, ghouls blood is radioactive enough to dance a jig to, provided you have a geiger counter, and he got splattered fairly liberally with it as he drove that blade under the jaw. At first there was resistance, and then the ghoul stopped flailing as much, and Six took a risk. He took his hand off the ghouls chest and put it on the pommel, and pushed. It was like driving a pencil through a mutfruit, except the "juice" smelled twice as bad. 

 

It took him a while to catch his breath, and when he did manage to sit up, the whole world spun. pain like lightning split the ass end of his header and when he checked his fingers came away red. It was impossibly striking against his ghostly pallor, but Six was a man of fortitude, or at least he thinks he is, and so already used to headaches, he managed to soldier on. His laser rifle was battered and worse for wear, but it still worked, a little ductile and a test shot against a rock made sure of that. He made sure to lead his next targets, and laser rifles don't kick. no recoil on heat. 

 

Brrzt! and a leg goes flying but the ghoul keeps clawing. Brrzt! there goes an arm. Brrzt! and a rollup pops a head like an over ripe cherry. ones to close now, Six lashes out with the stock-ka-thunk! he hits the ground and six follows him, battering until all thats left is a fine red mush where a head used to be. The laser rifle was of military make, and meant for combat at all ranges. so it held together but when he put a bolt through the legless survivor as he scratched ineffectively at the vulcanized rubber of Six's combat boots, it shuttered deeply and fearfully. The rifle wasn't in good knit when he'd bought it, and duct tape repairs weren't doing it any favors. 

 

"Shit, i coulda just stomped that bugger." He muttered to himself, now furious that he'd wasted a needless cell. Those weren't cheap, and the battered rifle he turned over in his hands was the entire reason that he didn't have enough money for a hat. he prayed to a god he wasn't sure he believed in that the rifle would hold together long enough for him to actually repair the damnable thing. lasers went off with a metallic shriek, but as he realized on seeing two more feral milling about in a crater half filled with a recent rainfall, and shelter by overhanging concrete. He unslung the rifle from his shoulder and bull rushed them. he hit the one on the left, less like a truck and more like a man who was running fairly fast. But feral ghouls don't get all the right vitamins and nutrients, so he went down in a tangle of broken bones. Judging from the wheezing, probably ribs, he could leave that be for now. The other ghoul was turning towards him, instincts dulled to uselessness now roaring in the stubs it called ears, and rammed into the square barrel of Six's AER-9, and it burned as Six pulled that trigger three times. It took three shots to burn a hole out of his back, and the unmistakable scent of energy warfare was floating on the breeze now. Ozone, and charred flesh, and leaking blood and bile. Lasers never seemed to cauterize properly anymore, but what can you do right?

 

The inside of the building was so dark he tripped over something big, and meaty. he fell, but managed to scramble back upright before any thing got to him. he hit the light, as a slow ghoulish voice went on and on from the intercom. He wasn't paying attention to the voice as the light revealed a twisted mass of bruised purple flesh holding itself into the shape of a human man that was too tall to be real.  Then the voice snapped too, and there was something off about it, like an actor playing with an accent he hadn't mastered.

"Listen smooth skin, were in real trouble, were at the back entrance, up a flight of stairs and we need some real help. And we need it fast." shit, that was that one phrase that managed to niggle its way under his skin. he couldn't just not help.

"Buddy you got super mutants down here and a wild mess of ferals. Im willing to help, but I'm gonna have to ask for something in return, caps or ammo or food. Shit, i'll take anything that might cover some of the risk i'm taking here."  

"you'll be compensated accordingly, now come and help us ya smoothie bastard."

And with that, Six found himself hurrying through a ghoul infested building in the dark. Never did meet a super mutant there though.

 


End file.
